For the second straight year, Bates received a silver-medal performance by the first varsity eight boat, while the 2V8 boat also finished higher than any other second varsity eight in the field save for Williams.

Bates 2 competed in the Petite Final, 15 minutes before the Grand Final at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center, and finished in fourth place out of six boats in a time of 7:06.02, just 2.48 seconds behind Washington College 1 for third place and ahead of the 2V8′s from Ithaca (7:10.06) and Trinity (7:13.41).

In the Grand Final, the Bates 1V8 stood in second place at every 500-meter interval of the 2,000-meter course at Lake Natoma. Bates couldn’t make up enough ground on Williams’ 1V8 in a final sprint, but like Friday’s elimination heat, the boat was able to maintain a slight lead over Williams’ 2V8 and held that boat off to keep the Ephs from sweeping the top two spots in the race. Williams 1 won in 6:43.81, followed by Bates at 6:48.66, Williams 2 at 6:49.02, Trinity 1 (6:52.94), Ithaca 1 (6:55.87) and Puget Sound 1 (7:04.43).

Bates is headed by captains Danica Doroski ’10 (Wayne, Pa.), Alison Frye ’10 (Duxbury, Mass.) and Ellen Patterson ’11 (St. Louis Park, Minn.). Other team members expected to make the trip include sophomore Haley Sive (Glenville, N.Y.), junior and two-time Pocock All-American Rebecca Waldo (Dracut, Mass.), sophomore Elizabeth Sonshine (Short Hills, N.J.), sophomore Amy Jacks (Baltimore, Md.), junior Phoebe Reed (Brooklyn, N.Y.), senior Lindsay Thomson (West Hartford, Conn.), sophomore Allison DiSalvo (Lowell, Mass.), junior Davina Dukuly (Lowell, Mass.), first-year Amanda Goss (Bainbridge Island, Wash.), sophomore Kelsey Dion (Truckee, Calif.), junior Emma White (Bainbridge Island, Wash.), junior Hannah Richardson (Concord, Mass.), first-year Catherine Tuttle (Pittsford, N.Y.). sophomore Caroline Webb (Tiburon, Calif.), junior Nora Collins (Kensington, Md.), first-year Elizabeth Bowling (Greenwood Village, Colo.), first-year Carrie Dillaway (Woodbridge, Conn.) and first-year Victoria Zapack (Charlotte, N.C.).

Doroski, Frye and Thomson plan to walk at Commencement back on campus in Lewiston Sunday morning at 10 a.m.

Friday Recap

Bates women’s rowing team’s first varsity eight fought off runner-up Williams’ 2V8 as well as rival Trinity’s 1V8 in the third and final elimination heat on Friday morning, as the NCAA Division III Women’s Rowing Championships got under way at Lake Natoma.

Bates’ 2V8 finished off the day by taking first place in the Petite Qualifier.

Bates 1V8 led Williams 2V8 by a slim margin at each 500-meter juncture of the 2,000-meter race, and both boats overtook Trinity in the second 500 meters. Bates timed in at 6:41.10, with Williams 2V8 at 6:42.02, Trinity 1V8 at 6:47.98, Wellesley 2V8 at 7:04.53, Mary Washington 1V8 at 7:12.88 and Puget Sound 2V8 sixth at 7:21.47. Three of the top four times in the preliminary heats were registered in the third heat.

Entering the championship, Bates’ 1V8 ranked fourth in Division III by the College Rowing Coaches Association/US Rowing, with Trinity at No. 3.

As the heat winner, Bates advanced automatically to the Grand Final, joining the other two heat winners, Williams 1V8 and Ithaca 1V8.

Bates’ 2V8 also fared well, taking fourth place out of five boats in Elimination Heat 2 in a time of 7:05.47, trailing only three high-quality 1V8′s in Ithaca (6:48.63), St. Lawrence (6:55.19) and Wellesley (6:55.34) and well ahead of St. Lawrence 2V8 (7:13.67). Bates 2V8 moved on to the Petite Qualifier at 3 p.m. Friday afternoon. Bates was in control throughout the race: neck-and-neck with Ithaca’s 2V8 after 500 meters, the 2V8 pulled slightly ahead at the halfway mark and extended the lead over the final 1,000 meters, finishing in 7:11.06. Ithaca 2 was second in 7:14.72, followed by Trinity 2 (7:16.64), which edged Wesleyan 2 (7:18.31) for the third and final automatic berth in Saturday’s Petite Final.

CLAREMONT, Calif. — They may as well have played on their own home courts, or at Lisbon High School for that matter, 3,000 miles away. But one of the greatest moments in the history of Bates athletics was a win over virtual neighbor and arch rival Bowdoin, decided in Southern California late Sunday night.

Bates College pair Ben Stein and Amrit Rupasinghe defeated Bowdoin duo Jamie Neely and Oscar Pena 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 for the NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Doubles Championship on Sunday night at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.

Just five minutes before midnight back in Maine, Bates clinched its first NCAA tennis doubles title when Stein, at net, volleyed back a Bowdoin shot to win the final point, following a Rupasinghe serve, at 40-0.

It is the second NCAA tennis crown overall (Will Boe-Wiegaard won the singles title in 2006) for Bates, as well as the second NCAA championship ever for Bobcat athletics in any sport other than track and field.

“There was [added] pressure because it was Bowdoin, our most intense rival in just about every sport,” said Bates head coach Paul Gastonguay. “But at the same time, we knew them and we know we could beat them. The familiarity of knowing the team sometimes adds more pressure, because feel like you’re supposed to beat them. We felt like we had to win. It would have been easier to take if we had lost to anyone else.”

Stein (Pelham, N.Y.) and Rupasinghe (Colombo, Sri Lanka) defeated Washington University in St. Louis doubles team Charlie Cutler and Chris Hoeland 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4 in the semifinals late Sunday afternoon. It was the second straight year the Bates pair has met and defeated the Washington University pair at NCAAs.

Prior to the doubles win on Sunday, Stein — unseeded, just as he and Rupasinghe were in the doubles draw — was defeated in the NCAA singles championship by Emory University’s Michael Goodwin, 7-5, 5-7, 6-1. Goodwin edged Stein in the first set, 7-5, and led 5-3 in the second set. Stein held serve to close the gap to 5-4, then broke Goodwin’s serve to stay alive and tie the set up at 5-5. Stein rode the momentum to capture the next two games and win the set, 7-5, sending the match to a third set, which Goodwin won decisively. Stein finished the season 21-7 in singles play.

The doubles title wrapped up an exhausting three days for Stein in particular. The senior, who played at No. 6 singles for Bates as a freshman, played five singles matches and four doubles matches in the three-day span of the singles and doubles championships, going 4-1 in singles and 4-0 in doubles. In all, he played 24 sets over the three days, including three tiebreakers.

“Amrit was crying his eyes out. Ben was beside himself. He couldn’t believe it,” said Gastonguay, describing the moments after the championship point. “Then we got together for great group hug. It was a really special moment, because a lot of hard work and dedication went into that moment. “The neatest thing was the support we got. Right after the final point, calls, e-mails, texts started pouring in, just people celebrating in places all over the world. I told them, ‘You’re part of a unique club right now.’”

Rupasinghe, the 2007 national singles champion in his native Sri Lanka, told the Lewiston Sun Journal that winning this doubles title outshines that moment in his eyes. “Definitely being a Division III champion,” Rupasinghe said he preferred. “I would say this is something I wanted since I came to college, to win a national championship. I think I’m the first player from Sri Lanka to do that. I couldn’t believe it. It was like, ‘This is not real.’”

Saturday Recap

Stein, the Bates senior, won two singles matches on Saturday to advance to the finals of the singles championship. He then teamed up with Rupasinghe to play his sixth match in two days, and Bates’ two-time All-American Bates duo won that match, too, to advance to the semifinal round.

Stein defeated the top seed in the 32-player field, John Kauss of Gustavus Adolphus, 7-5, 7-5, to reach Sunday’s championship final.

Prior to his semifinal victory, Stein defeated Andrew Wang of Johns Hopkins University in the quarterfinal round on Saturday morning, dropping the first set and edging Wang in a tiebreaker in the second set to stay alive, eventually winning by a 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-0 score.

Stein becomes the third Bates player to reach an NCAA final. His teammate for one year, Will Boe-Wiegaard ’06, played in the final in both 2005 and 2006, winning the championship in 2006, and Buddy Schultz ’81 was the first to reach the singles final, in 1981.

Stein and Rupasinghe then faced the Kenyon College pair of Michael Greenberg (the 2008 NCAA singles champion) and Will VandenBerg. The Bobcats won the first set in a tiebreaker and cruised in the second set for a 7-6(1), 6-2 victory.
Stein, now a three-time All-American, played for the NCAA singles championship earlier in the day. Stein played nine matches in three days. (Photo courtesy of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps)

Friday Recap

The Bates College men’s tennis team saw its top singles player and its top doubles team both earn All-America honors on Friday at the NCAA Division III Tennis Championships. Stein won two singles matches to advance to the quarterfinals of the singles championships, before he teamed up with Rupasinghe to win in the first round of the doubles championship.

Stein defeated Robbie Erani of host Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 6-1, 2-6, 6-2, in the first round of the singles tournament. The win clinched Stein’s second career All-America honor and his first in singles play.

Stein, who is making his NCAA singles debut, advanced to face Mark Boren of Emory University in the Round of 16, defeating the NCAA championship veteran by a score of 6-4, 6-4.

The doubles portion of the tournament began after two round of singles play, and Stein and Rupasinghe, who made it to the semifinals of the doubles tournament last year but were not seeded this year, matched up against the second-seeded team of Max Liberty-Point and Ilya Gendelman of UC Santa Cruz. The Bobcats fell behind early as the Banana Slugs won the first set 6-3, but they rebounded with consecutive 6-3 set wins to advance to Saturday’s quarterfinals.

Stein’s success was all the more stunning considering his tennis background, which unlike most of the other players at the NCAA Championships didn’t include the junior circuit as a teenager.

“It’s cool to beat up on the guys that used to be too good to even bother paying attention to you,” Stein told the Sun Journal. “It shows that when you really dedicate yourself to something, make a decent effort at something, you can get the result you expect.”

Senior Ben Stein ’09, seen here, and partner Amrit Rupasinghe ’10 defeated Bowdoin for the 2009 NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Doubles Championship at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.

While Sylvan Ellefson ’09 hasn’t banished sweets or Commons crispitos from his diet, he’s honed an understanding of what his body needs to perform at peak level.

“I was definitely not conscious of eating a balanced diet my first year here,” says Ellefson, a Nordic skier from Vail, Colo., who won All-America honors at last year’s NCAA Skiing Championships. “But in the past two years I’ve really realized what it means.”

Now, he and his teammates consider Bates Dining Services to be part of their team. “Commons does a great job of providing us with the food we need for how we train,” Ellefson says.

For example, when the Nordic team travels during carnival season, their van carries Commons-provided food like granola, breads, fruits, and yogurt. Not for the skiers’ major meals — they get meal money for that — but for quick post-race nutrition. “Your body recovers more quickly if you get food right after a race,” explains Sam Evans-Brown ’09, Ellefson’s teammate.

When it comes to establishing healthy food routines, the teammates support each other, says head coach Becky Flynn Woods ’89. “It’s about getting into the right habit. For example, the skiers racing later in the day will take time in the morning to prepare food, like PB&Js, for everyone to eat right after
the races.”

These days, the Nordic team’s training is especially motivated, what with Bates hosting this season’s NCAA Championships, March 11–14. For Ellefson, a Colorado-raised skier not recruited by any Division I schools out West, his competitive cup runneth over. “I’m proud to race as a Bobcat,” he says. “I love it in Maine.”

An alpine enthusiast growing up, Ellefson and his Vail Mountain School soccer buddies took up cross-country skiing to stay in shape during the winter. As a high school sophomore, he won skimeister as the best performer in Nordic and alpine events. By then, he knew his forte was Nordic so he dropped alpine, comparing it to choosing soccer over baseball when, as a little kid, he “couldn’t hit the ball off the tee.” But as a relative latecomer to Nordic skiing, Ellefson came East for college when Division I schools passed him up.

Highly competitive by nature, Ellefson describes his mother, Tashina, as a “tremendous” athlete. His late father, Lyndon, who helped found the sport of skyrunning — high-altitude, long-distance running — died in 1998 when, on a training run near Cervinia, Italy, he fell into a hidden snow crevasse, dropping 75 feet to his death.

Sylvan Ellefson is well-aware of his father’s reputation as a highly motivated competitor who pushed himself hard. “I feel that if I can do something really well, I can carry on his legacy,” he says. “In my case that’s Nordic skiing.” Looking ahead to his post-Bates racing career, he wants to “get to that level,” referencing the accomplishments of Nordic alums like Justin Freeman ’98, a 2006 U.S. Olympian, “and then do better.”

Ellefson’s specialty is freestyle, like skating on skis, and he earned trips to the NCAA Championships in both 2006 and 2007. Last year was a breakthrough season, as he won freestyle races at the season-ending carnivals at Williams and Middlebury, the first-ever wins for a Bates Nordic skier on the Eastern Collegiate Skiing Association circuit. At the 2008 NCAA Championships, Ellefson finished fourth in the 10K freestyle, one of only three Americans, and the only Division III skier, in the top 10.

While Ellefson targets another top-five finish, teammate Evans-Brown, a Spanish major from Gilmanton Iron Works, N.H., is so eager to qualify for his first NCAAs that he spent last summer in Argentina, living with a government official who’s a cross-country enthusiast, so he could train on snow. “I had easy access to skiing and was well-fed,” he says. “Lots of meat, for breakfast, lunch, snacks.”

There, he earned a reputation as “the kid who always eats,” and Evans-Brown estimates that he and Ellefson will take in 6,000 to 9,000 calories a day while training hard. That’s more than triple the typical daily diet of 2,500 calories — if not quite the famous 12,000-a-day regimen of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps.

While the Nordic team tends to frequent Italian restaurants on the road for a good balance between protein and carbs, “what you eat right before a race is not so important, I think,” Evans-Brown says. What’s critical is “fueling yourself well while you’re training.”

At a recent campus meal, Ellefson and Evans-Brown are joined by Nicole Ritchie ’09 of East Dummerston, Vt. Twice an All-American rower as well as a skier, she has begun to avoid processed food. “A friend is doing a thesis that focuses on corn syrup,” she says. “I’ve been reading over her shoulder. The amount of energy going into producing corn syrup is pretty disgusting.”

In the new dining Commons, Ritchie gravitates toward local products: apple cider from Greenwood Orchards, chocolate milk from Oakhurst Dairy, and hamburgers from grass-fed, Cold Spring Ranch beef (see page 16) for her training fuels. She also frequents the vegan bar.

“Making your own food choices takes a lot of different economic and environmental issues into your hands,” says Ritchie. “It’s really cool that Commons supports us in making these decisions.”

The Bates College men’s tennis team was selected to participate in the NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Championships for the seventh straight year on Monday, the longest such streak of any athletic program at Bates.

The Bobcats (9-9) are one of 27 teams who will play in the tournament, and one of seven teams who will play in the Northeast Region. Three of the teams are at Middlebury and four are at Williams.

Bates is the fourth seed in the field at Williams College and will play the host Ephs (12-3) this Saturday, May 6. The winner will face the winner between Trinity College (13-3) and Bowdoin (7-10) in the second round for the right to move on to the quarterfinal, semifinal and final rounds at the University of Mary Washington May 17-22.

The selection of teams is based on won-lost record, strength of schedule and eligibility and availability of student-athletes. The selection committee considered team results in collegiate matches play from Sept. 6, 2005, until the time of final selections.

In the 2005 championship, UC-Santa Cruz defeated Middlebury 4-1.

Midway through the winter season, six Bates College student athletes have qualified for the NCAA Division III championships. Three students from the swimming and diving teams have qualified, as have three from the indoor track and field teams.

The Bobcats’ most recent qualifiers were a pair of first-year members of the women’s swimming and diving team. First-year diver Kara Seaton of Wayne, Pa., has broken school diving records in three of the Bobcats’ six meets this season. Against CBB rival Colby College on Jan. 19, she established a new school record in the 3-meter event with a score of 255.60, meeting the NCAA standard for the first time after coming within 10 points on two previous occasions. Seaton also holds the record in the one-meter event, scoring 241.60 in the season’s opening event at Trinity College Nov. 17. She needs to meet the NCAA qualifying standards twice more in the season’s four remaining meets to ensure her berth at the NCAA Division III swimming and diving championships March 14-16 at Miami (Ohio) University.

Seaton’s classmate, Vanessa Williamson of Auburn, Maine, a product of Edward Little High School, has also qualified for two events so far. Against Colby on Jan. 19, she broke her own school record in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:08.50, missing the ‘A’ qualifying standard by just a hundredth of a second. She is ranked 11th in the nation in the event. Williamson also qualified for NCAAs in the 100-yard butterfly against Colby, posting a time of 1:00.08 to place her 34th in the nation.

Senior diver Andrew Hastings of Weston, Mass., has qualified for the NCAA championships multiple times this season. Hastings, a six-time All-American, has only lost once in 11 events he has competed in this season. Most recently, he broke his own school record in the three-meter event Jan. 12 at Babson College with a score of 320.68. It was Hastings’ first NCAA performance on the three-meter board after qualifying several times on the one-meter, including a win over the defending national champion at a Jan. 6 meet against Middlebury College. Hastings is attempting to become the first Bates athlete to win All-America honors in four years in a row.

The Bobcat track and field teams have qualified three student-athletes in the throwing events. Senior captains Jaime Sawler of Stratham, N.H., and Greg Hurley of Arlington, Mass., who both qualified for the NCAA Division III championships earlier in the 2001-02 season, each improved their seeding for the championships at a triangular meet at MIT Jan. 19. Sawler, a two-time All-American in the hammer throw outdoors, qualified automatically for the NCAAs in the 35-pound weight throw with a winning heave of 59 feet, 7 1/2 inches. He is now ranked third in the nation in the event. Sawler will make his third trip to the indoor championships, to be held March 8-9 at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. Hurley took second in the weight throw with a toss of 54-6 3/4, improving his season- and career-best performances by nearly two feet. He is currently ranked seventh in the nation.

Sophomore Liz Wanless of Belleville, Ill., is the sixth Bobcat to qualify for the NCAAs. She broke her own record in the shot put with a heave of 42 feet, 11 inches. Wanless took second in the event at the University of Southern Maine Invitational Jan. 12. Wanless set the previous mark of 40-11 in her only meet of the 2000-01 season. She also qualified for the NCAA championships on a provisional basis. She is currently ranked sixth in the nation in the event. Wanless’ toss was one foot shy of the automatic qualifying standard. A trip to the NCAAs would be the second for Wanless, who was a key part of the Bates’ run to the Sweet 16 of the 2000 NCAA Division III volleyball championships.